Pub Date : 2023-08-26DOI: 10.1353/cul.2023.a905074
Laura Jordán González, Nicolas Lema Habash
Abstract:Raúl Ruiz, one of Latin America's most prolific filmmakers, shot La maleta (The Suitcase) in 1963, but the film was only finished post- 2007. To complete La maleta, Ruiz focused on the soundtrack and took up the role as the voice-over in the film, recording it himself. The result is something akin to an experimental piece, one of whose main characteristics lies in the peculiar relationship established between images and soundtrack. We propose an in-depth examination of the soundtrack of the film by analyzing two aspects. First, we look at the constitution of a "mute" film, a notion inspired in Michel Chion's ideas, used for characterizing endeavors that tend to sidetrack the traditional prominence of a speaking voice in cinema. Second, we study the presence in the film of a mode of synchronicity between body and voice that accentuates the abolition of an articulated language.
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To Risk, One's Life Bryan Counter (bio) IN PRAISE OF RISK BY ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE; TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER Fordham University Press, 2019. IN PRAISE OF RISK BY ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE; TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER Fordham University Press, 2019. Composed of short chapters and written in a poetic style, Anne Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk (Éloge du risque) makes a number of careful interventions related to the notion of risk, intercut with narratives of her own sessions as an analyst. Because of the inclusion of these narratives, as well as the text's overall intimate tone, one could understand it as a series of letters addressed to risk. Each section is granted a particular thematic heading—"To Risk One's Life," "Desire, Body, Writing," and "Life—Mine, Yours," to name the main sections that I will discuss here—all uniquely related to the problematic of risk and its place in contemporary life. But Dufourmantelle does not simply piece together an oblique thesis from disparate fragments that happen to fall under a general idea. Rather, the very form of the book indicates an ethical position with regard to risk. It is through a close, sustained, and nuanced engagement with risk that Dufourmantelle gives voice to a stance that is unpopular, untimely, and risky in itself—namely, that risk is not only something to take seriously but may also be something to be celebrated. Its unorthodox structure notwithstanding, In Praise of Risk is first and foremost a psychoanalytic text. At its core, it is motivated by an understanding of the logic of the unconscious and its ability to disrupt a more traditional philosophical idea of causality, as seen in the descriptions of various analytical sessions. In particular, Dufourmantelle is concerned with highlighting risk as being already inscribed in [End Page 212] our lives before any idea of fate is mobilized, usually after the fact through our own narration. The inclusion of her analytical accounts is crucial in that they provide concrete examples of her patients' self-narration of their own lives, which in turn serve as the backdrop against which Dufourmantelle's discussion of risk takes place. In Praise of Risk begins with a simple but provocative statement: "Life is a heedless risk taken by us, the living."1 As Dufourmantelle suggests by characterizing it as "heedless," risk is installed before any intervention on the part of those who live (and before any calculation of outcome) before the very question of outcome is raised. From the text's beginning, life is established as a risk, indeed as risk itself, something reckless and resistant to calculation. If the living necessarily take part in the heedless risk of life, then living—life itself—is already permeated by risk. Dufourmantelle touches on this apparent paradox just a few lines down, in a passage that includes an important pair of clarifying questions: "To risk one's life" is among the most beautiful expressions in our language. Does it necessarily mean
《冒险,一个人的生命》布莱恩·Counter(传记):安妮·杜福曼特尔的《赞美冒险》;福特汉姆大学出版社,2019年。安妮·杜福曼特尔对冒险的赞美;福特汉姆大学出版社,2019年。安妮·杜福曼特尔的《风险的赞美》(Éloge du risque)由简短的章节组成,以诗意的风格写作,对风险的概念进行了一些谨慎的干预,并穿插了她自己作为分析师的叙述。由于包含了这些叙述,以及文本的整体亲密基调,人们可以将其理解为一系列写给风险的信。每一部分都有一个特定的主题标题——“冒生命的风险”、“欲望、身体、写作”和“生命——我的,你的”,我将在这里讨论的主要部分——所有这些都与风险问题及其在当代生活中的地位有独特的关系。但杜福尔曼特尔并不是简单地将碰巧属于一个总体思想的不同碎片拼凑成一个倾斜的论点。相反,这本书的形式表明了一种关于风险的道德立场。通过与风险密切、持续、细致入微的接触,杜福曼特尔发出了一种不受欢迎、不合时宜、本身就有风险的立场——也就是说,风险不仅是一件值得认真对待的事情,而且可能是一件值得庆祝的事情。尽管《赞美风险》的结构非正统,但它首先是一部精神分析的文本。在其核心,它的动机是对无意识逻辑的理解,以及它破坏更传统的因果关系哲学观念的能力,正如在各种分析会议的描述中所看到的那样。特别是,Dufourmantelle关注的是,在任何关于命运的想法被调动之前,风险就已经铭刻在我们的生活中,通常是在事实发生之后,通过我们自己的叙述。她的分析性叙述是至关重要的,因为它们为她的病人对自己生活的自我叙述提供了具体的例子,而这些例子反过来又为杜福曼特尔对风险的讨论提供了背景。《赞美风险》一书以一句简单但颇具煽动性的话开头:“生活是我们这些活着的人冒的一场轻率的风险。”正如Dufourmantelle通过将其描述为“粗心大意”而提出的那样,风险在那些生活的人的任何干预之前就已经存在了(在任何结果的计算之前),在结果的问题提出之前。从文本的一开始,生活就被确立为一种风险,甚至是风险本身,一种不计后果、不愿算计的东西。如果活着的人必然要冒生命的危险,那么活着——生命本身——就已经充满了危险。杜福曼特尔在几行之后的一段话中提到了这个明显的悖论,其中包括两个重要的澄清问题:“冒生命危险”是我们语言中最美丽的表达之一。它一定意味着要面对死亡并生存下去吗?或者更确切地说,在生活本身中,是否存在一种秘密机制,一种独特的音乐,能够将存在取代到我们称之为欲望的前线?为了冒险——它的对象现在还不确定——打开了一个未知的空间。(1)所讨论的表达的美和冒生命危险的美,在这里已经说明了。但这也是一种修辞上的举动,它为对风险的独特理解奠定了基础:我们不一定对风险有一个坚实的理解,因为风险总是与它的对应物——预防——联系在一起,预防确保了风险作为“一种不容置疑的价值”的地位(1)——也就是说,不容置疑,但也不容置疑。显然,这只涉及对该术语的一般理解。那么风险到底是什么呢?如果它不是简单地把一切都置于危险之中,面对自己的死亡,那么它会是什么呢?正如杜福曼特尔在这里所假定的那样,风险是生活中的某种东西,它使生者屈从于欲望。如果像欲望一样,风险具有不确定的对象和不可预测的后果,那么它总是在生者和生活中起作用,具有双重价值:风险既是一种行为……
{"title":"To Risk, One's Life","authors":"Bryan Counter","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0034","url":null,"abstract":"To Risk, One's Life Bryan Counter (bio) IN PRAISE OF RISK BY ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE; TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER Fordham University Press, 2019. IN PRAISE OF RISK BY ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE; TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER Fordham University Press, 2019. Composed of short chapters and written in a poetic style, Anne Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk (Éloge du risque) makes a number of careful interventions related to the notion of risk, intercut with narratives of her own sessions as an analyst. Because of the inclusion of these narratives, as well as the text's overall intimate tone, one could understand it as a series of letters addressed to risk. Each section is granted a particular thematic heading—\"To Risk One's Life,\" \"Desire, Body, Writing,\" and \"Life—Mine, Yours,\" to name the main sections that I will discuss here—all uniquely related to the problematic of risk and its place in contemporary life. But Dufourmantelle does not simply piece together an oblique thesis from disparate fragments that happen to fall under a general idea. Rather, the very form of the book indicates an ethical position with regard to risk. It is through a close, sustained, and nuanced engagement with risk that Dufourmantelle gives voice to a stance that is unpopular, untimely, and risky in itself—namely, that risk is not only something to take seriously but may also be something to be celebrated. Its unorthodox structure notwithstanding, In Praise of Risk is first and foremost a psychoanalytic text. At its core, it is motivated by an understanding of the logic of the unconscious and its ability to disrupt a more traditional philosophical idea of causality, as seen in the descriptions of various analytical sessions. In particular, Dufourmantelle is concerned with highlighting risk as being already inscribed in [End Page 212] our lives before any idea of fate is mobilized, usually after the fact through our own narration. The inclusion of her analytical accounts is crucial in that they provide concrete examples of her patients' self-narration of their own lives, which in turn serve as the backdrop against which Dufourmantelle's discussion of risk takes place. In Praise of Risk begins with a simple but provocative statement: \"Life is a heedless risk taken by us, the living.\"1 As Dufourmantelle suggests by characterizing it as \"heedless,\" risk is installed before any intervention on the part of those who live (and before any calculation of outcome) before the very question of outcome is raised. From the text's beginning, life is established as a risk, indeed as risk itself, something reckless and resistant to calculation. If the living necessarily take part in the heedless risk of life, then living—life itself—is already permeated by risk. Dufourmantelle touches on this apparent paradox just a few lines down, in a passage that includes an important pair of clarifying questions: \"To risk one's life\" is among the most beautiful expressions in our language. Does it necessarily mean ","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135575407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay offers a response to the special issue of Cultural Critique on the theme of "Communication, Biopolitics, and Social Reproduction." Drawing on the record of Marx's personal library compiled by Roland Daniels in 1849, it begins by arguing that, given his expansive intellectual and cultural interests, Marx would have had little trouble recognizing himself in all of the papers collected together here. The essay goes on to argue that his work can be understood not only as a historical phenomenon but also as a contribution to contemporary discussions of rhetoric, affect, biopower, and the so-called new materialism. It concludes with a brief consideration of what a Marxian history of rhetoric might entail.
{"title":"Rhetoric, Affect, and \"A Whole Lot of French Novels\": A Marxian Response","authors":"C. Barbour","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay offers a response to the special issue of Cultural Critique on the theme of \"Communication, Biopolitics, and Social Reproduction.\" Drawing on the record of Marx's personal library compiled by Roland Daniels in 1849, it begins by arguing that, given his expansive intellectual and cultural interests, Marx would have had little trouble recognizing himself in all of the papers collected together here. The essay goes on to argue that his work can be understood not only as a historical phenomenon but also as a contribution to contemporary discussions of rhetoric, affect, biopower, and the so-called new materialism. It concludes with a brief consideration of what a Marxian history of rhetoric might entail.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86698170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Situating this collection of essays within the global pandemic associated with COVID-19, the author returns to Marx and Engels to account for how the unhealthy history of capitalism they document transforms their writings into what Mark Neocleous terms a "political economy of the dead." From this starting point, the author amplifies the importance of biopolitics, social reproduction, and rhetoric as important concepts for the future study of Marx and Marxism.
{"title":"Living and Dying in the Age of COVID-19: Social Murder, Reproduction, and Rhetoric","authors":"M. R. Greene-May","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Situating this collection of essays within the global pandemic associated with COVID-19, the author returns to Marx and Engels to account for how the unhealthy history of capitalism they document transforms their writings into what Mark Neocleous terms a \"political economy of the dead.\" From this starting point, the author amplifies the importance of biopolitics, social reproduction, and rhetoric as important concepts for the future study of Marx and Marxism.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74237001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay identifies and describes the "antiquarian impulse" in 9/11 docudrama, arguing that fixation on 9/11's material culture undermines human agency and abdicates national responsibility by ascribing agency to 9/11's artifacts. The essay finds a precedent for this acquiescence in nineteenth-century literary antiquarianism, which used similar techniques of deflection to diminish the ongoing role settlers played in Indigenous annihilation. Though these distinct moments in literary history are not analogous, they both bend temporality to facilitate national narratives of innocence, unpreparedness, and inevitable war. Whereas nineteenth-century antiquarian literature depicts the extinction of the "vanishing Indian" as an event that had already taken place, 9/11 antiquarianism fabricates a similarly specious spatiotemporal architecture wherein the nation is beset by inevitable "failures of imagination" that are mitigated only unending, borderless wars. The essay argues that antiquarian impulse in literature and film has consequences for how we approach both human agency and twenty-first-century warfare.
{"title":"Vanishing People: Politics, Preservation, and the Antiquarian Impulse in 9/11 Docudrama","authors":"Kristina Garvin","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay identifies and describes the \"antiquarian impulse\" in 9/11 docudrama, arguing that fixation on 9/11's material culture undermines human agency and abdicates national responsibility by ascribing agency to 9/11's artifacts. The essay finds a precedent for this acquiescence in nineteenth-century literary antiquarianism, which used similar techniques of deflection to diminish the ongoing role settlers played in Indigenous annihilation. Though these distinct moments in literary history are not analogous, they both bend temporality to facilitate national narratives of innocence, unpreparedness, and inevitable war. Whereas nineteenth-century antiquarian literature depicts the extinction of the \"vanishing Indian\" as an event that had already taken place, 9/11 antiquarianism fabricates a similarly specious spatiotemporal architecture wherein the nation is beset by inevitable \"failures of imagination\" that are mitigated only unending, borderless wars. The essay argues that antiquarian impulse in literature and film has consequences for how we approach both human agency and twenty-first-century warfare.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90442599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay introduces the Cultural Critique special issue "Communication, Biopolitics, and Social Reproduction." Social reproduction has been a central concept for theorizing the relationship between economic exploitation and oppression along axes of race, gender/sexuality, nationality, and ability, as well as for considering how capitalism shapes contemporary subjectivity. First, I situate social reproduction's relationship to communication and biopolitics, discussing rhetoric and communication as key modalities of contemporary capitalist social reproduction. Second, I consider the ways that scholars in rhetorical studies and in the critical humanities have turned to biopolitics as a vocabulary for theorizing power and resistance under capitalism. Finally, I introduce the special issue conversation, discussing the essays' contributions to biopolitical readings of Marx, to theories of affect and extractive capitalism, and to strategies for resisting capital's reproduction.
{"title":"Introduction: (Re)producing Subjects, Objects, and Resistances","authors":"Matthew W. Bost","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay introduces the Cultural Critique special issue \"Communication, Biopolitics, and Social Reproduction.\" Social reproduction has been a central concept for theorizing the relationship between economic exploitation and oppression along axes of race, gender/sexuality, nationality, and ability, as well as for considering how capitalism shapes contemporary subjectivity. First, I situate social reproduction's relationship to communication and biopolitics, discussing rhetoric and communication as key modalities of contemporary capitalist social reproduction. Second, I consider the ways that scholars in rhetorical studies and in the critical humanities have turned to biopolitics as a vocabulary for theorizing power and resistance under capitalism. Finally, I introduce the special issue conversation, discussing the essays' contributions to biopolitical readings of Marx, to theories of affect and extractive capitalism, and to strategies for resisting capital's reproduction.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76639219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This essay argues that the discourses of love and affective attachments are remapped from our primary social relationships onto our household objects, providing further insight into our current crisis of social reproduction. Turning to Marie Kondo's widely circulated imperative to retain only those objects (socks, furniture, household goods) that "spark joy," and to cultivate affective attachment to those objects, this essay explores the directive toward intense consumerism as a means to manage personal and cultural anxieties during times of neoliberal precarity.
{"title":"Marie Kondo and the Joy of Things: Affective Discourses of Housekeeping","authors":"Kristin M. Swenson","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay argues that the discourses of love and affective attachments are remapped from our primary social relationships onto our household objects, providing further insight into our current crisis of social reproduction. Turning to Marie Kondo's widely circulated imperative to retain only those objects (socks, furniture, household goods) that \"spark joy,\" and to cultivate affective attachment to those objects, this essay explores the directive toward intense consumerism as a means to manage personal and cultural anxieties during times of neoliberal precarity.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75792255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A brash “selfmade” billionaire with no previous political experience is elected to the nation’s highest office, buoyed by a rising tide of populism. Sophisticated manipulation of the media stokes xenophobia and resentment toward elites. The chattering classes decry declining press freedom and the hyperpolarization of society, while supporters seem happy to toss a monkey wrench into national politics as usual. While this farce may now be familiar to American readers, the tragedy began for Italians in 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi first took office as prime minister. Berlusconi continued to dominate Italian politics through 2011 and whose specter still hangs over Italy even now, always seemingly one clever joke and a smile away from the news cycle. More important than Forza Italia, the centerright political party he founded prior to his first election, is Berlusconi’s control of Mediaset, Italy’s largest mass media company. The Economist calculated that, while in office, Berlusconi had “wielded influence over some 90% of Italy’s broadcast media,” the primary source of news for a majority of Italians.1 Berlusconi took advantage of the media liberalization that followed the widespread popularity of pirate radio during the 1970s, epitomizing the appropriation of resistance that would characterize his political career. But the politicization of the media in Italy certainly
{"title":"Resistance Comes First: Pirate TV as Postmedia Activism","authors":"J. Sannicandro","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0033","url":null,"abstract":"A brash “selfmade” billionaire with no previous political experience is elected to the nation’s highest office, buoyed by a rising tide of populism. Sophisticated manipulation of the media stokes xenophobia and resentment toward elites. The chattering classes decry declining press freedom and the hyperpolarization of society, while supporters seem happy to toss a monkey wrench into national politics as usual. While this farce may now be familiar to American readers, the tragedy began for Italians in 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi first took office as prime minister. Berlusconi continued to dominate Italian politics through 2011 and whose specter still hangs over Italy even now, always seemingly one clever joke and a smile away from the news cycle. More important than Forza Italia, the centerright political party he founded prior to his first election, is Berlusconi’s control of Mediaset, Italy’s largest mass media company. The Economist calculated that, while in office, Berlusconi had “wielded influence over some 90% of Italy’s broadcast media,” the primary source of news for a majority of Italians.1 Berlusconi took advantage of the media liberalization that followed the widespread popularity of pirate radio during the 1970s, epitomizing the appropriation of resistance that would characterize his political career. But the politicization of the media in Italy certainly","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89232254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The zombie has often been used as a metaphor for industrial production and mass consumption, but older interpretations of zombies as industrial workers or ideologically duped consumers do not adequately explain why the zombie apocalypse has captured our imagination today. This essay analyzes modes of production and forms of labor that emerged over the last decade in China and the United States. Specifically, it discusses the form of production Foxconn developed to produce modern electronics, and application-based labor such as Uber/Lyft, in order to provide a foil for an analysis of our contemporary economic anxieties. I argue that the "dead" labor Marx locates in industrial production has not simply been "outsourced" over the last forty years: it has been transformed into "undead" labor and has returned in a new, spectral form.
{"title":"Undead Labor and Instruments of Production: Zombies, Foxconn, and the Gig Economy","authors":"Brynnar Swenson","doi":"10.1353/cul.2023.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2023.0025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The zombie has often been used as a metaphor for industrial production and mass consumption, but older interpretations of zombies as industrial workers or ideologically duped consumers do not adequately explain why the zombie apocalypse has captured our imagination today. This essay analyzes modes of production and forms of labor that emerged over the last decade in China and the United States. Specifically, it discusses the form of production Foxconn developed to produce modern electronics, and application-based labor such as Uber/Lyft, in order to provide a foil for an analysis of our contemporary economic anxieties. I argue that the \"dead\" labor Marx locates in industrial production has not simply been \"outsourced\" over the last forty years: it has been transformed into \"undead\" labor and has returned in a new, spectral form.","PeriodicalId":46410,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81535379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}